Cast in Ruin

“There is no court of last resort among the Barrani. There are no Hawks or Swords that any sane Barrani will use. The Barrani are part of the City, but the only way they seem to really interact involves commerce. If I were Barrani, I would therefore have to live and act as if anyone—anyone at all—could be planning to assassinate me. Or if anyone could decide it was necessary if I somehow offended them.

“I could, if I felt powerful enough and secure enough, afford to offend the less powerful with impunity. I’m not sure I’d consider it wise. But…on the other hand, I suppose if I did behave that way, it would give people second thoughts about attempting to take me down.”

“Does this sound familiar?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “It sounds like any other sort of thug law. But it’s got more money behind it.”

“Good. The way in which it is clothed is crucial to its execution, but it is, in essence, something you do understand. It does not require your approval; survival has often been its own imperative.”

“You’re trying to tell me that the same is true of the Dragon Court.”

“No. The Emperor is your Commander.”

“Then what was your point?”

“Lord Diarmat is not. He is, however, dangerous in precisely the same way the Barrani are dangerous. He is not above the law—but if he chooses to break the law, the Emperor may grant him dispensation if he feels such extremes were merited.”

“And total lack of respect—”

“For a Dragon of his stature? I leave you to draw your own conclusions.”

“I’m sworn to uphold his laws. Saying that you killed someone because they annoyed you isn’t codified as acceptable, by those laws, anywhere that I’m aware of.”

“You are clearly not looking carefully enough.” He let his arms drop to his sides. “How did the lesson go?”

“He didn’t attempt to teach anything. I thought I’d get a list of things that were no-go around the Emperor. You know: don’t burp, don’t swear, don’t scratch your armpit, don’t wear green.”

“Green?”

“Or whatever color he doesn’t like. I thought he’d give me a list of acceptable ways to address the Emperor. With, you know, titles, and gestures—how to salute, how far down to kneel, whether or not you ever get to stand on your feet in his presence.”

“And?”

“He made me stand in front of his desk for half an hour without saying a word while he wrote a letter to the Hawklord.”

“I…see. And you did?”

“I work for Marcus. When Marcus is ticked, you stand in front of his desk at attention for as long as it damn well takes. I can do it for hours. I’m not great at it, and I don’t enjoy it, but that’s never mattered much.”

Sanabalis said crisply, “Good.” He smiled, but it was slender, and there was a trace of edge in the expression. “After the half hour?”

“He handed me a bunch of papers. I assumed they’d be the class transcripts from the Halls, which every prospective teacher seems to pore over. Even you.”

“They were not.”

“No. They were—” She sucked in air and almost pushed herself out of her chair. Or his chair. “Reports.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “They displeased you.”

“No one’s pleased to find out that every single thing they’ve ever done has been spied on, Sanabalis.” She did push herself out of the chair then. “But the last report—or the last one I looked at—was the Foundling Hall report.”

Sanabalis’s inner membranes rose. “Your reaction?”

“I sat on my reaction,” she told him, pacing around the chair. “But…the bracer started to light up.”

The Dragon Lord lifted a hand. “You did not speak?”

“No.”

“Bad,” he told her grimly. “But it will have to do. The class was ended at that point?”

“More or less.”

“I will attempt to augment your lessons with some of the material you expected to be handed. I am busy,” he added more severely, “but I will take the time to compose a list. You will not, however, be short of work.”

“I’m working on the outside desk at the moment. You’ve got a way to get me back in the streets?” It was the only possible bright spot in a day that had left her with the nausea that comes in the aftermath of fury.

“So to speak. I, too, have a letter which I wish you to deliver to Lord Grammayre. I guarantee that its contents will differ somewhat radically from those of Lord Diarmat’s.”

Kaylin went home in the dark. Not that it was ever completely dark in Elantra, and certainly not close to the Palace, where magic had been used the same way stones had: it made the streets passable. Kaylin was all for useful magic; she usually felt that there wasn’t enough of it.

Severn wasn’t waiting outside for her, which was a good sign. It meant he trusted her to more or less survive a lesson with Diarmat intact. But she missed his company on the way home, because she was, in fact, still fighting fury, and it helped to have someone she could both shout at and not offend while she did. There were no muggings, and nothing that looked as though it demanded legal intervention. There were, on the other hand, a few people who’d already spent too much time or money in a tavern.

She could unlock the front door of the apartment building in her sleep; unlocking it in the dark wasn’t much of an issue. Navigation in the dark only involved the narrow steps, and they were worn and warped enough that they creaked in a totally predictable way as she climbed them. It wasn’t late, yet. She’d eaten, and if she was hungry, she wasn’t starving. Hunger could wait until morning.

Her door was locked. It often was, but enough of her friends had keys that it wasn’t a guarantee; if Teela or Tain were totally bored, they’d show up and hang around. Tain was a bit more circumspect than Teela, who would often lounge strewn across the narrow bed while she waited. Severn, if worried, would also show up, but like Tain, he generally waited in her one chair.

Unlike Tain, he often tidied while he waited.

But he wasn’t waiting now, and the room was its usual mess. None of that mess generally caused her to trip and injure herself in the dark, as it was mostly clothing. There were, of course, magical lights that one could buy to alleviate the darkness—but those cost money, and Kaylin was chronically short of funding. She hesitated in the open door and glanced with trepidation at the mirror on the wall; she relaxed when she saw that it was, like the rest of the room, dark. No messages meant no emergencies.

No emergencies meant sleep.

Before she could sleep, she opened the shutters to her room and let the moonlight in. It wasn’t bright enough to read by; it was bright enough for navigation. There was one thing she had to check before sleep was a possibility. Kneeling beside the bed—and shucking clothing into the rough and very spread-out pile she’d, in theory, wash any time now—she pulled a smallish box out from beneath its slats and removed the lid.

Nestled among scraps of cloth that were used mostly for cleaning in the midwives’ hall, was an egg the size of two fists. Well, two of hers at any rate. It had been born during the inexplicable magical upheaval that had left the City with thousands of newcomers, and no place to house them before Tiamaris had volunteered his fief. Other children had been born during that time, and in the magical zone—but they’d been children with unusual features: extra arms, extra eyes, full speech. No one in the guildhall had any idea what was in the egg.

Nor did Kaylin. But when Marya had handed her the box—at the grieving and shocked father’s insistence that the egg be disposed of—she had dutifully picked it up and carted it home. It didn’t weigh much. She’d meant to mention it to someone who specialized in magical theory, such as it was, but she didn’t really want to hand it over to the Dragon Court, the Imperial Mages, or the Arcanum. This left a much smaller pool—of one—and her desk duty had kept her off her current beat. Which was, sadly, where the single person she had in mind lived and worked.

The egg’s shell had started out almost soft to the touch, but it had grown harder and stronger. She wasn’t sure if this meant the egg actually had something living in it, because she wasn’t sure if whatever it was could be sustained without magic. Which she didn’t have. At least, not on purpose.

And thinking that, she carefully removed the bracer she wore as a matter of course throughout most of her working days. Laying it to one side of the box, she lifted the egg out, set it on the bed, swaddled it in her own blankets, and curled around it protectively to keep it warm.

Morning happened, and judging from the fall of sunlight, she wasn’t late, yet. Her sleep had, to her surprise, been untroubled, which did happen a handful of days each year. She had time to fish food out of the magical basket that Severn had given her. Of all the magic she’d seen, this one was the most quietly impressive: it preserved food. Even bread. She wasn’t certain for how long, because food didn’t generally last long in her apartment; she’d have to test it one day.

She then dressed, snapping the bracer back into place on her wrist and rooting through the clothing she’d thrown on the floor the night before to fish out the two letters she’d been handed by two entirely different Dragon Lords. The forlorn and unhatched egg went back into its box, and back under the bed.

The walk to work ended with Clint and Tanner at the doors. Clint nodded, and Tanner said, “You keep arriving at work on time and people are going to start worrying.”